Jackie Loves Johnser OK?
A mischievous collection of short stories ‘translated’ from the obscure (and fictional) European language of Ŝerci by a maverick translator with a questionable grasp of his rights and responsibilities, and introduced by national treasure and celebrity authoress Fenella Overlord (who has strong views on internationalism, wokeism and Englishness), In Other Words dramatises what happens when the writer-reader relationship is disrupted by outside influences.
The Internet gets requisitioned for national security, a book reviewer discovers the issue with women’s writing, and the cream tea becomes a barometer of Britishness, but beneath all this a drama unfolds in the reader’s responses, leaving them uncertain who to trust. Building on questions around translation and reading across cultures explored in her non-fiction works, Morgan’s debut short-story collection asks what happens when we know a text has been interfered with – and how biased criticism can slant the way we read.
Irreverent and satirical, In Other Words pokes fun at some of the problems in the way we move stories between worlds and plays with how much we can know about what’s been done to words when we meet them in a book.